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El Centro de Santa Fe
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Santa Fe, NM 87501505-820-7413
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Chandler Goodstrike: 'Focus on one thing and do it well'
In his booth, Chandler Good Strike, of the Fort Belknap Gros Ventre, the White Clay people, has begun to paint a new buffalo robe. Born in 1936, Good Strike began to work full time on his par fleche cases, rawhide drums, buffalo robes and shields in 1992 when he retired from a long career with Xerox Corp.
He uses natural earth paints, some formulated more than 500 years ago, and brushes made from pieces of feather-light bone marrow to decorate his award-winning creations.
“My sales reinvest in the reservation," he said, explaining that all of his supplies come from the Ft. Belknap area.
Good Strike is a practical man with a strong work ethic. He is dressed meticulously in a fully-beaded vest, western shirt and draw tie.
"I gave 110 percent at Xerox. Most of the time family comes second when you buy into a company," he said.
Good Strike said the way to achieve success is to "focus to on one thing, and do it well."
He chose to stick with the trade of tanning and par fleche painting.
Good Strike was adopted into the Sioux and taught painting by Gerald Red Elk, who showed him how to mix paints, how to design, explained direction of the figures and the stories behind them.
"After learning the process, I knew how to improve. And I have changed my style by doing finer work that is requested by customers."
Material success has not been easy.
"Sometimes when I make rawhide, it's not a pleasant job. Sometimes the meat is rotten, very smelly. My clothes get dirty. After tanning hides all day when I go to the post office, everybody leaves.
"A soaked hide may weight 300 pounds and I may do two a day. Then you have to lift them to stretch and dry them and sometimes you have to take the hair off. I then can decide if they are suitable for hand drums or par fleche. Ninety percent of the time I paint par fleche rawhide. Very few people do the real McCoy."
Good Strike said the way of life he has chosen is also key to survival. He lives in a 20- by 30- foot cabin, heated only with a wood stove. The physical activity this requires in addition to the tanning, keeps him fit.
"I plan to do this until I am unable to walk or drive," he said. "It gives me a sense of pride and helps me develop the attitude of getting up to work every day."
Good Strike knows the struggle of daily living.
His wife, whom he met at Indian boarding school, has supported him through bouts of alcoholism, he said. She is president of Ft. Belknap Community College. "I put her through a lot of garbage in her life. I didn't appreciate her. Without her I'd be in prison or on skid-row."
Good Strike has two sons in the art world, one a teacher and one an artist. He passes his knowledge on by traveling throughout Montana, teaching young people drum-making and helping non-Indians to understand the Indian way of living, clothes, religion, and language that was taken away.
"I'll go to an all-white school and see one dark-skinned young man. I try to improve him, because I made it in a white man's world," he said. "We had to hold our hands out. We have to learn to work with white people, how to make a living. Our way of life was in the open fields, in tanning. Now we have to learn math."
He is trying to build a gallery to house the many artifacts that he has collected throughout his life and to house the many others that are leaving the reservation.
"I want a young person to read this and understand this is how I succeeded," he said.
"In my first show in 1993 in Sioux Falls I got there on Thursday to set up my booth. After looking at all the other beautiful artwork there, paintings, oil, acrylics, metal sculpture, wood, hide painting, bronzes, I felt very small. I didn't feel right. Closing on Sunday night I had a handful of money. I couldn't get over how much money I had made. I left Sioux Falls at four in the evening and I laughed all the way to Rapid City."
~ Pam Hughes / Indian Country Today